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Friday, September 19, 2014

Multiple sources- BBC, Guardian, Sky News- are calling the Scottish independence referendum for the pro-union side. The independence movement has formally conceded defeat. And the appropriate congratulations to those who came out on top. But this may not be it. The numbers are close enough- you can see them here; they're still coming in as I type this- that the matter may not be settled for good. The independence movement has managed to get close enough to 50%+1 that failure by the rest of the United Kingdom to cater more to their needs may very well result in them having another go at it before too long.

And one of the key issues of the campaign concerns just that. There's a proposal on the table in Parliament to only permit English members of Parliament to vote on matters that solely concern England- an arrangement that doesn't exist for the non-England parts of the UK, making those parts, Scotland in particular, rather unhappy. If you're in the UK right now, someone is probably talking about it on the news as we speak, under the tagline 'English votes for English laws'. If that goes ahead, we may be back here soon.